I Moved to KDE

Posted on 2017-03-04

So this last week I finally got fed up with Gnome dragging ass. Far long ago in the past, I enjoyed Gnome. It was a fast flexible desktop compared to the bloat and slowness of KDE trying to fit in so many dang desktop effects. This has changed.

For a while, I had stopped using Linux on my desktop machine. I was (and still kind of am) a Mac user. The primary reason being that I'm a designer and all my design software is on there. I literally need it to get work done.

And before it's argued that Windows has that same software and I could just use Windows. First off, I despise Adobe. I use Affinity. Second, Affinity is on there, but Sketch is not. Plus, Windows feels.... off somehow. I spend too much time fighting little things.

And before it's argued that Linux has design tools that are good enough. No. No it does not. It has Krita, which is damn good art software, but it's not a Photoshop replacement. Gimp can be argued, but it's PSD support is not great. There is no alternative to Adobe or Affinity software on Linux. Especially for vector (Inkscape is cool, but missing some print based features) and page layout software (though I haven't looked into Scribus for a while).

Also, neither has anything like Sketch. Anyways, back on topic.

I'm not doing a lot of design work anymore. Mostly just web development, and that's on the side. My main job is telephone systems, and I don't need a Mac for that (though I used one and it worked). I requested, and somehow got permission, to use a Linux laptop for work. So I installed Antergos. It's a good mix between pure Arch and something with less effort like Ubuntu. When I first installed it, I chose Gnome because it was familiar (knowing what some have been saying about it).

At first, all was fine, but then.... It just started to kind of drag ass. Gnome documents seems to grind my machine to a halt every morning, and things generally took longer than I felt it should on the machine I was using. So on a while I changed things up to KDE Plasma. Because it's Linux and I can do that on Linux.

I have to say, I am impressed with it. Things feels snappy, and my battery life seems to last longer. I've been switching my applications over to QT equivalent options (for desktop integration), and Konsole has the features I needed Terminix for (tabs and split view). My one gripe (and it's ever so minor) is that I liked using the Meta key as an action key rather than a modifier. I would be great if I can find a workaround to have the Meta key trigger the Present Windows Effect. I would be golden then.